A river as holy bovine

As we travel past marble rocks of Bhedaghat, the bank seems to fly. Of course this is only an illusion, as the Yoga-Vashishta reminds us, it's our boat that is coursing on the waters of the Narmada. Talking of illusions, our boatman tells us that people who watch Raj Kapoor's Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai often mistake the Narmada for the Ganga!

"For, the movie was shot around our Bhedaghat in late 1950s," he literally swells up with pride as he gestures towards the marble-faced moonscape that looms over us. In the everyday world, too, everything is not what it seems, our boatman says.

"Look out for an attractive little cow on the banks of the Narmada," he advises. The black bovine could be the Ganga in disguise. Where does a river go when she herself has to wash off the sins that devotees have shed into her purifying waters? Of course she goes to an older, even more potent sister river! Locals believe that every night , the Ganga comes to Narmada in the guise of a cow to cleanse herself!

As for Narmada's burdens, the river whose name means "harbinger of pleasure", she is thought to be sinless because she is believed to have been born out of the sweating form of Shiva, the Destroyer, in meditation. Narmada is often referred to as Shankari. Another legend links the river's birth to the twin teardrops that fell from the eyes of Brahma, the Creator.

One cosmic tear led to the formation of Son and the other yielded Narmada. But a Sanskrit proverb warns against probing too deeply into genealogies of famous rishis, actresses and rivers! So what if the river is a cow? Isn't her water holier than milk?